January 17, 2017

Whistleblowers essential in 'Jack Straw Case'

At a meeting of the Home Affairs Committee 11th February 2014 I raised the issue of the kidnap of Abdel Hakim Belhadj. The former head of GCHQ was not helpful in his replies. The issue is again in the news with an allegation against Jack Straw that he denies. It's a shame that Sir David Ormond was not more forthcoming in 2014.

Q631Paul Flynn:In 2004, Mr Abdel Hakim Belhadj, with his pregnant wife, was abducted from Bangkok Airport, flown to Gaddafi’s Libya and tortured. In 2005, Jack Straw denied that the British Government had any involvement in renditions. In 2011, Human Rights Watch discovered documents and published them which named the British MI6 agent who they claim had boasted about this abduction, and Jack Straw has subsequently said that he was advised by MI6 on this. No one would have the knowledge of this and the truth on this without Human Rights Watch. Many other matters we would not have the truth of if it was not for whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. Do you not agree that we do need the whistleblowers, and they do convey to the public the truth of what is going on, rather than listen gullibly as we are told-as I have been and as the Chairman has been-that there was no involvement with extraordinary rendition. We were lied to. Do we not need whistleblowers?

Professor Sir David Omand:Let me say that a true whistleblower, in accepted international convention, has to exhaust his remedies. For example, Mr Snowden could have gone to his employers-I understand why he would not do that; I would not press that point. He could have gone to the inspector general, the independent figure of his organisation. I would not press that point either. He could have gone to Congress. Just imagine if Mr Snowden-flanked perhaps by the editor ofTheGuardianand the editor ofTheNew York Times-had walked into the Congressional Oversight Committee and said, "The White House has kept from you and the Executive have kept from you knowledge of a massive programme of collecting data on American citizens." There would have been a huge political stink. I am quite sure President Obama would have been forced to issue the sort of statement that he issued a few weeks ago.

Paul Flynn:He has.

Professor Sir David Omand:Mr Snowden would have achieved his objective and he would not have had to steal 58,000 British top-secret documents or 1.7 million-

Paul Flynn:There is very little time, so can I just make two points?

Professor Sir David Omand-he did not do that, so in my book he is not a whistleblower.

Q632Paul Flynn:Monsieur Dick Marty, who is a very distinguished Swiss MP, who was described by a Foreign Secretary here to me as being a madman-he was not; I know him very well. He was the person who very bravely took up this issue in Europe. Successive British politicians denied what was going on. The question is: do we not have to rely on the whistleblowers, on the Dick Martys, on the Human Rights Watch, to get the truth? Otherwise we live in ignorance, as politicians and the public. Of course they supply this service to us, surely.

Professor Sir David Omand:I believe in the free press. Under no circumstances will I want to muzzle the press. If they can perform a public service, let them do that. In a well-regulated democracy, you don’t have to rely on the media.

Also at same meeting

Paul Flynn:I want to ask about two matters in my time in Parliament, the first of which is the decision to join the war in Iraq in 2003, which the security services and the Intelligence Committee were cheerleaders for and supporters of. We now know that that decision meant the loss of 179 British lives. Those lives were sacrificed in the cause of trying to protect the United Kingdom from attacks from non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Do you think that there has been some improvement now and that the loss of confidence in the Committee and the security services from that event-and another one I will mention in a moment-has been repaired in some way?

Professor Sir David Omand: Time has healed to some extent, but it was a very significant blow to the credibility of the intelligence community and we fully accept that there were significant matters that we got wrong.

I think you mentioned the Security Service in your question. That may have been a reference to the Secret Intelligence Service. I think Dame Manningham-Buller gave evidence to the Chilcot Committee-as I did-pointing out that in our joint Intelligence Committee reports we had indeed made clear that the consequence of intervention in Iraq would be an increase in radicalisation domestically.

Q592Paul Flynn:You accepted the likely existence of weapons of mass destruction, did you not?

Professor Sir David Omand: Yes.

Paul Flynn:And you were wrong.

Professor Sir David Omand: Yes. Well, we believe we were wrong.

Q593Paul Flynn:Just another matter, if I can briefly go into it. A similar, but even worse decision-which a Conservative Member asked for an inquiry into yesterday-was that in 2006, there was debate in the House on the wisdom of an incursion into Helmand Province, where at that time only two British soldiers had died in combat. The justification for going in-again, supported by the cheerleaders on the Security Committee-was that we would be there for a maximum of three years, end the growing of heroin, which is now at a record level, and come out in the hope that not a shot would be fired. It was compared in the debate in the Commons as equivalent to the charge of the light brigade. The person who did that understated the situation because the numbers of British casualties-lives that have been lost in Helmand-are three times the numbers lost in the charge of the light brigade. When we look back at the record of the security services and the Intelligence Committee, was this not a terrible mistake to support Government at that time? Should they not have been providing a check on the Government?

Chair:Thank you, Mr Flynn. A brief answer, because we need to move on.

Professor Sir David Omand: We should look forward to the publication of the official history of the Joint Intelligence Committee, which at the moment is being written by one of my colleagues at King’s College. I hope that will be published within a few months, and that will perhaps set the record straight about the overall balance between getting things right and getting things wrong.

Q594Paul Flynn:Would you answer the question?

Professor Sir David Omand: I had left Government service by then. I do not think I have any way in which I can help.

Q595Paul Flynn:Has there been an improvement that should increase public trust in the intelligence services after these two calamities?

Professor Sir David Omand: I would simply point to the number of terrorist plots-directly relevant to the inquiry you are engaged in here-which have been frustrated by the activities of the intelligence services, and we are all safer because of it.

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A state that tortures, that deems the horrors of waterboarding as not even torture i.e repeated drowning that the body can't resist, well, as long as they appear respectable and can carry it off thats all that seems to matter. Its the logical outcome of careerism. Of being managed instead of represented. That's how it seems to me.

Its not just torture, its the anguish of unlimited detention and all the mistreatment that goes with it. There are certain things that cross the line and must be answered for. Between people who have principles this should raise an alarm: